Barely in Wonderland With Things I Can Not Say

Ok, I know it's been a really long time since I posted. Well, not that long, it's not like anyone's paying attention anyways. But last night I got really high, and started looking for a movie to watch on Netflix. As it was that I had the house to myself, I decided to watch a particularly "me" movie that I had been wanting to watch that I knew Mel wouldn't like. So I picked Phoebe In Wonderland. A darling little indie film about a little girl, as she grows older starts to suffer from Tourette's syndrome. One day there is a new drama teacher in school, and they have a play of Alice in Wonderland, and she is casted as Alice.

This movie literally made me want to cry. It reminded me of when I was in high school reading Alice, and painting a mural on it, and decoding all of the reality of the books true meanings. And watching a 9 year old deal with their thoughts and insecurities, and watching her struggle with urges that she can't control, it reminded me a lot of myself. I don't have Tourette's, but there is something that always stood out to me about Alice in Wonderland, that stood out to Phoebe in this movie. Sometimes in life you run really fast to stay in one place. And for Phoebe I guess that could mean all the odd things she would physically do to herself out of fear of losing something important to her. It's no secret that in life we all do these things. We struggle to keep ourselves a float, even when most of the time to us, it seems like everyone else is just swimming along. It's funny to me, that life long lessons can even be understood to a 9 year old.

But what also got me about this film (other than my blatent obsession with Alice in Wonderland) is that in every other situation Phoebe was considered unrulely and troublesome, but the second she hits the stage she's a different person. She's happy, she's thoughtless, she's not scared, or angry, she just IS.

I feel like for most of us, in life we don't usually find things that can just take us away from ourselves for a really long time. And when we do find it most of the time we don't know what to do with it. I was just telling a friend today, how much doing Barely Alive has helped me to feel that way. I usually work on Barely Alive at my job. In order to not get fired I'll just say that my job is purely on the phone calling people all over California for 6 hours a day. Sometimes work can go by very fast on it's own, and other's it tends to mostly lag. Originally I just started doodling at work, just to pass the time. And now if I'm working on a series of pages I can knock out 2 fully inked pages in 1 shift. When I do that all the people hanging up in my face, screaming at me, asking me if I know what time it is, all of it fades away, and none of it matters at all. Because I just keep going right back to drawing and not even thinking for a second about a word anyone has said. It's like I don't have to think, I don't have to do anything extra at all, I can just sit in the corner and make the world how I want it to be in my drawings, or laugh at things I could never laugh about, say things I would never say. It's like I'm healing myself in every aspect just by illustrating how I see the world.

Fun Fact: Elle Fanning plays Phoebe in Phoebe in Wonderland, and she also happens to be Dakota Fannings little sister.